Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Canucks On Heartland Institute Payroll

DeSmog Blog has dropped the bomb: leaked documents from the Heartland Institute outlining their campaign against the science of AGW. Goals include hiring a fellow named David Wojick to write up a K9 curriculum contra the evidence for AGW

Update: It should be noted that the Heartland Institute disputes the authenticity of the "strategic document" from which the quotes I used above have been taken. While the general content of the document--Wojick's writing up a set of course modules and etc.--has been confirmed, some of the more inflammatory wordings ("dissuading teachers" etc.) may be in question. I have pulled the quotes until such time as their authenticity has been established.
Now, the heavy lifting has all been done by others in this case, but I thought I'd provide a little CanCon by noting that two of the "scientists" on the Heartland Institute payroll and Canadians Madhav Khandekar and Mitch Taylor:

10 comments:

The first hit is from the Guardian Comments blogBut it seems to have been taken up by the real paper -- Susanne Goldenberg.& it should get some New York Times coverage, given this comment from the leak --// The strategy memo as published by DeSmogBlog mentions "cultivating" as a potential ally Andrew Revkin, a respected journalist who enjoys a huge following at the New York Times DothEarth blog. //http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/leak-exposes-heartland-institute-climate

Khandekar is still on the ICSC Science Advisory Boardhttp://climatescienceinternational.org/images/pdf/flier-icsc-28-10-11-web-linked.pdf

Khandekar was also an executive and "allied expert" for the now-defunct Natural Resouces Stewardship Projecthttp://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Natural_Resources_Stewardship_Project

Both the ICSC and the NRSP received funding from the Heartland Institute in 2007, $45,000 and $25,000 US respectivelyhttp://hot-topic.co.nz/puppets-on-a-string-us-think-tank-funds-nz-sceptics/...despite ICSC's insistence that it has never taken money from corporations or organizations:http://climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=510

Curiously (or not), the list of names appearing as experts for one organisation is nearly interchangeable with the other.

The "2012 Climate Strategy" document, which Heartland says is a forgery, is the one that the shocking quotes come from. I noticed several suspicious things about it:

1. It refers to Heartland's own position as "anti-climate." But that's a derogatory term which climate skeptic outfits never use to describe their positions.

2. It's written in the first person, yet there's no indication of who wrote it. (Have you ever seen a memo like that?)

3. The PDF is time-stamped with a Pacific Standard Time date & time: "2012-02-13T12:41:52-08:00" ("-8:00" means PST) But Heartland is in Chicago (two time-zones away), and none of its directors are in the Pacific time-zone. Most are in Illinois. None of them live anywhere near the Pacific time-zone.

So it appears probable that, as Heartland claims, the document is a (rather clumsy) forgery. Is anyone surprised?

Michael Tobis answers your points here(http://planet3.org/2012/02/14/is-turnabout-fair-play/), Dave, for the benefit of others reading. A fairly good discussion of the affair at that URL, actually. Although mostly consisting of contributions from "warmists".

My name is Jimmie and I'm a payroll specialist in Canada. Thank you for providing this blog for the employee like us. One can never image a company without a payroll management system. I would like to say that the biggest motivator for employees is the salary. But estimating how much payment an employee deserve is not an easy task.